


Edward's Emails

by bluebacchus



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Anxiety, Comedy, Edward Little's Inbox, Gen, Horse Boy, Married Life, references to War Horse (2011)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-17 22:34:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28981944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluebacchus/pseuds/bluebacchus
Summary: Edward takes control of his email inbox. The consequences are dire.
Relationships: Thomas Jopson/Edward Little
Comments: 22
Kudos: 53





	Edward's Emails

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the terror bingo prompt "insubordination" and inspired by a tweet exchange with @tombowline

_Do you want to block this user?_

Edward hesitates. It had been so easy to block emails from Topman, Costa, and Waitrose. He hadn’t hesitated to add George and John to his blocked sender list.

(They text him the important things, like the date of their next pub night and who won the bet about Mr. Fitzjames’s hairbrush.)

But Mr. Crozier? He’s Edward’s boss, and yeah, this is his personal email and Crozier can still send him all the instructions he wants to at work, but Edward really, really just wants to switch off when he comes home.

“Are you done yet?” a voice calls from the bedroom. Edward can smell the sweet scent of rose petals wafting in from his and Tom’s bedroom.

“In a minute!” he calls back. The cursor hovers over the ‘block sender’ button.

“I’m getting very cold in here, darling,” Tom yells. “You know, since I’m not wearing any clothes. Completely naked. In bed. Waiting for you. Big boy,” he adds.

“Fuck it,” Edward growls in an uncharacteristic moment of decision-making. He hits the button, and Francis Crozier is relegated to email jail.

Later, when he is cozy in bed and wrapped in his fluffy bathrobe, Tom asks him how many emails survived the purge.

“Three. You, of course,” Edward says, though Tom has never sent him an email in his life. That’s probably why he married him. “Equestrian life magazine—“ Tom nods, accepting Edward’s horse-boy nature but still not quite understanding the majesty, the _freedom_ of horses, tall and powerful and beautiful—“and AO3.”

“Ah yes,” Tom says. “You must get those kudos.”

“They’re instant serotonin, Thomas. I need as much of that as I can get.”

Tom pats his head. “I love you, but I don’t regret enforcing the no-laptop-in-the-bedroom rule.”

Edward curls up in a ball in shame. Tom had nearly lost his mind when Edward rolled off him one night to quickly type up a sex scene inspired by their own coupling.

All has been forgiven, it seems, when Tom presses a kiss to Edward’s forehead and says, “I’m glad you’ve found something you love. Other than me, that is.”

“Sometimes Hawkeye and Trapper just need to kiss,” Edward mumbles.

“You’re right, love. But only after you kiss me.”

Edward looks up from his self-made bundle of man. “I love you,” he says. He purses his lips, but is too sore from their recent strenuous lovemaking to bend his neck in a way that will let him kiss Tom. Tom shakes his head fondly and cuddles closer, kissing him lightly on the lips.

The next day at work goes smoothly. No one has noticed that Edward has not responded to a single email sent to his personal account. His work email, of course, has 442 unread messages and makes him feel queasy. He starts at the bottom, answering inquires about shipbuilders and materials and copies and pastes “I’m sorry, but we are not a shipping company. Please get in touch with Royal Mail to determine the whereabouts of your package” about a hundred times before he decides to take a break. He clicks on his inbox. He still has 442 unread emails.

George finds him rocking back and forth under his desk with four mugs of coffee placed around him like he is summoning the energy to deal with his inbox. It simply seemed more economical to fill up four mugs at once rather than return to the coffee maker three more times. Under his desk, the emails can’t find him. Neither could his coworkers, or at least that had been his impression.

“Old boy!” George exclaims. “Care to join us for lunch?” He motions behind him and John peers around his cubicle. He has the wherewithal to look ashamed for interrupting Edward’s breakdown.

“Can’t. Too many emails.”

“Well, maybe we can distract you! Did you get the meme I emailed you last night?”

Edward blanches. “I, uh, well, you know…” He waves a hand around his head.

“Why don’t you send them to the groupchat?” John asks. “Most of your emails get flagged as viruses, George.”

“What?” George replies, indignant. “Whatever for?”

John pulls out his phone and reads, “This gorilla is wild! You’ll never guess what happens next! Click the link!”

“I don’t see a problem with my subject headings,” George says.

“Free mail order Russian brides,” John reads.

“That’s an invitation to a benefit for the prevention of human trafficking! We need to free those women!”

“Singles in your area.”

“We need one more to play pairs badminton,” George says like it’s obvious.

“Tom plays,” Edward says, finally waking up from his post-email coma.

“Aha!” George screeches. “You want to work through lunch so you can go home to your handsome husband!”

“Is that not allowed?” Edward asks.

John tugs at George’s sweater vest. “Let’s just go, George. Edward will come next week.”

George holds up a threatening clavier-calloused finger. “I’ll hold you to that, Edward.”

Edward crawls out from under his desk and wakes his computer from sleep mode. His emails have nearly doubled.

Somehow, a miracle has occurred and Edward has an empty inbox when he leaves the office. This will surely not be the case when he returns to work in the morning (why do so many people send him emails overnight? Don’t they have things to do?) but for now he is free. He checks his personal inbox on the tube home: he has three emails. The first tells him that a new issue of Equestrian Life is on shelves now. He will have to add it to Tom’s grocery list. The second informs him that someone left a lovely comment on his most recent War Horse (2011) fanfiction.

_Bro this is sick. Horses fuck so hard._

He responds with a kind and thoughtful message about why horses are the greatest creatures on god’s green earth (aside from his husband, Tom) and thanks the commenter for reading. He saves the email for a later serotonin boost. The final email shows the kudos left on his fics. Edward feels a deep sense of accomplishment and peace. People really seem to appreciate his in-depth descriptions of Hawkeye and Trapper kissing in their tent after a long night of war surgery. 

He arrives home, changes into something comfortable—his work trousers have been feeling a little tight in the waist lately—and goes to the kitchen to chop some vegetables for dinner. Tom, lovely bloke that he is, posts his recipes on the fridge with a series of horse-shaped magnets that denote the day of the week. Edward skims today’s menu and extracts a bundle of broccoli and a massive carrot. He chops, free from the burden of his inbox filling.

Later that evening, Tom is settled on the couch with his feet in Edward’s lap, nose buried in his book. He’s just started a biography about Benito Juarez.

“Did you know that the Nahuatl word for horse is cahuayo, which was adapted from the Spanish, caballo?” Edward says. He has so many horse facts bumping around in his brain, but he spreads them out to spare Tom from his obsessive rambling.

“I had no idea, love,” Tom says. He reaches out and ruffles Edward’s hair. “How is your new fic coming along?”

Edward scrolls to the top of his word document. “It’s nearly done. A twenty-four thousand word War Horse (2011) fix-it! The fandom won’t know what hit it.”

“Will you let me read it?”

“Of course. It’s about Joey and Topthorn’s friendship, so obviously Topthorn survives and then they find these apples—“

“Can we watch War Horse again this weekend? It’s been a while,” Tom says, and if Edward hadn’t already married him, he would propose to him this instant. Instead he squeezes in between Tom’s side and the couch cushions and holds his husband while he reads.

“Did you finish the spreadsheet?” Crozier asks first thing the next morning.

Edward hasn’t even taken his coat off yet.

“Which spreadsheet is that, sir?” He has finished many a spreadsheet in his day.

Crozier doesn’t look angry, just disappointed. Edward feels small.

“The one I emailed you last night.”

“I’m afraid I did not receive it, sir,” Edward says firmly. _Draw boundaries,_ Tom had said. Blocking four hundred and sixty five emails from his personal account was him drawing boundaries, and Edward would not budge.

“Then you have—“ Crozier checks his pocket watch—“eighteen minutes to do it this morning."

Edward silently screams into his morning coffee as he inputs figures and colour-codes rows at the speed of light. His heart feels like it’s going to explode out of his chest and hit George in the forehead. His intestines twist like snakes and scream at him to slow down on the caffeine intake. He ignores them. He will deal with them later.

With twelve seconds to spare, he sends the spreadsheet to Crozier. Then he shuffles to the loo and sits on the toilet for ten minutes, playing Horse Haven World Adventures to calm down. He feeds Tommy the Sunlit Unicorn some purple cupcakes, and he feels his heart slow to an acceptable rate. He grooms Thomas the Thoroughbred and his insides untwist. He grows some cherries for Tomás the Glimmering Fairy Horse and finally, he is ready to return to his desk.

“How are your horses?” John asks. “I could hear your optimistic horse game music when I went to fill up the kettle.”

“They’re fine,” Edward answers. He opens his inbox and has to think about how tranquil Tommie the Shetland pony looked when she won the day’s dressage competition so he doesn’t cry. There are so many emails.

But the day ends, Edward goes home, and Edward has another relaxing evening filled with good food, sweet kisses, and War Horse (2011).

“It really is a good film,” Tom says as the credits roll. Edward surreptitiously wipes away his tears on the sleeve of his jumper.

“It’s the best,” he croaks. Tom makes a pitying noise and lets Edward bury his face in his chest. He holds him tight.

That night, filled with love and inspiration in equal measures, Edward completes his magnum opus. The final word count is over 25k and, as it does not feature any Tom Hiddleston/Reader, it is sure to stand out among its fellow War Horse (2011) fics. He passes it to Tom for editing.

An hour later, Tom hands the laptop back, eyes brimming with tears.

“I’m so happy Joey and Topthorn could be together forever,” Tom sighs. “The magical immortality-granting apple as a metaphor for the commemoration of the Great War is really beautiful, Ned.”

Edward offers his payment in kisses, then copies and pastes his fic into the appropriate box on ao3. Proudly, he clicks ‘publish’.

“Did you get the spreadsheet I sent you last night?” Crozier says the next morning at work.

Edward looks down to check his phone and be certain he’s not stuck in a Groundhog Day-style time loop. It’s not yesterday. He sighs in relief.

“Are you listening, Edward?”

“Yes, sir. I don’t have access to my work email at home, sir.”

“I sent it to your personal email.”

Edward shrugs. He feels guilty, and he’ll crack like an egg under the slightest pressure. Crozier’s words hit him like a rusty metal spatula.

“Did you _block me_ , Edward?”

Edward can see John duck behind his cubicle in his peripheral vision. George isn’t even pretending to hide. To Edward’s horror, he pulls out a bag of microwave popcorn and shovels a handful in his mouth. He can’t lose this job. Despite the unholy amount of emails he receives on a day-to-day basis, it’s the best job he’s ever had. It pays the mortgage on his and Tom’s house. He is suddenly bombarded with images of Tom—beautiful Tom, kind Tom, always-indulges-Edward’s-weird-horse-related-manias-with-a-smile Tom—destitute, alone, _unhappy._ No! Edward punches his guilt down like a particularly unruly sourdough and lies to his boss.

“No, Mr. Crozier. I’ve been having some trouble with the wi-fi at home, though. It seems I’ll have to do all my work at the office. You know, during my nine-to-five hours during which I get paid.”

“You get paid a salary, Edward.”

“Based on an eight hour work day. Sir,” he adds, because he can be polite even when he’s subtly threatening to form a union.

Crozier’s eyes bulge out of his sockets and for a moment, Edward thinks his head is going to pop like a pink, Irish balloon. It does not. Instead, he retreats to his office, muttering something about ‘insubordination’ and Edward is informed by George through a mouth full of popcorn that the next spreadsheet has a deadline of ten minutes ago.

“Too fucking bad!” Edward shouts, and bats the popcorn bag out of George’s hands. It flies across the room and hits Hartnell the Intern in the face.

Edward finishes the spreadsheet and sends it to Crozier with a stream of apologies. He also slips Hartnell a tenner not to tell anyone about the popcorn incident.

Tom works half-days on Fridays, so he’s already home when Edward arrives through the front door. He is taken aback by his husband, clad only in his silky bathrobe, waiting for him in the kitchen.

“Do you love me?” Tom asks.

“More than anything, my love.”

“More than horses?”

Edward does not hesitate, but he does feel like he’s betraying his old horse, Marigold, a little bit when he says “Yes.”

“Would you still love me if I did something bad?”

Tom is biting his lower lip. Either he’s gearing up for a spanking, or he really did do something bad. Edward figures it must be the former. Tom is an angel. He would never betray Edward.

“I’ll have to punish you if you were a bad boy,” he says, voice pitched low. In his normal voice, he whispers, “Is this what you’re going for?”

Tom whispers back, “No, but now I can’t think of what it was I was going to tell you.”

Edward clears his throat and gets back into character. “Into the bedroom with you. Pants down. I’m going to punish you like the bad boy you are.”

Tom vibrates with delight, and skips off to the bedroom. Edward makes sure he leaves his phone on the kitchen counter. He doesn’t want anything to distract him.

Later—much later—Edward retrieves his phone and finds three missed calls from Crozier. It’s nearly nine o’clock—too late to be calling his boss. He’ll phone tomorrow. Probably. It’s Saturday. The day he has to work on a Saturday is the day he finally convinces John and George to form a union.

More exciting are the eight emails from ao3, all comments on his newest fic. The first one ( _Would be better with some Hiddles/Reader imo lol)_ he deletes in frustration.

“It’s about the _horses,_ ” he mumbles to himself. “And friendship. And the immortality gained by commemoration and collective mourning.”

The next four comments are wonderful, all going directly into the folder he keeps for rapid serotonin boosts. One of them he’s certain was left by Tom, but he won’t call him out on it. His husband’s support means the world to him, and he’s twice as lucky that Tom likes to leave anonymous five-paragraph comments on his niche fanfiction.

The next comment stops him in his tracks.

_Edward, answer the damn phone. FRMC_

There’s only one person who that could be. He checks the timestamp. It was posted five minutes after the first phone call from Crozier.

He checks the next comment.

_I need you to edit the Ross report by Monday morning. JCR is coming in for the blueprints first thing and I have no idea what Fitzjames did to them but they look like burnt ass. FRMC_

There is no mistaking it. The Ross report has been a thorn in Crozier’s side ever since Fitzjames decided to add another room onto the blueprints of the Ross’s ancestral home, thinking they were a potential design for a new hotel. He added a spa, of all things, and Crozier lost his mind. The report was supposed to document the results of a routine inspection, but the blueprints have been lost twice, found once, redrawn once, and, on one memorable occasion, lit on fire. It fell to Edward to write a complete report of what happened so they could win the inevitable court case that will come when old John Ross finds out that Mr. Hickey’s Construction has already started tearing down the south wall of the 14th century villa to install a mud bath.

With growing dread, Edward clicks on the final email.

_This is good, by the way. Writing a completely nonverbal relationship is difficult and you’ve pulled it off in a marvelous way. The immortality apples are a bit contrived but metaphors have always gone over my head. It’s about remembering the war, isn’t it? I’ll pay you overtime for the report. Don’t form a union, and for God’s sake, don’t form a union with George in it. We’ll all be ruined. FRMC._

“You know I can’t lie to Francis,” Tom says. He’s apologetically rubbing Edward’s shoulders. “He phoned and asked about our internet connection, and I told him you were publishing stuff last night. He just kept asking questions, Ned!”

Edward relaxes under Tom’s hands. “It’s fine. At least he read the fic.”

“He did?”

“Yeah, he liked it. Complimented me on how I tackled writing a relationship between horses where neither of them speaks. Obviously. Because they’re horses.”

“That’s wonderful, love. I really am sorry. I don’t want you to work overtime because of my inability to lie to my pseudo-dad.”

Edward sighs. “It’s fine. He’s paying me overtime, apparently.”

“Hmm,” Tom says, hooking his chin over Edward’s shoulder. “Maybe we can do something nice with the extra money. Go down to Brighton and ride the Ghost Train, maybe.”

“Can we ride horses on the beach?” Edward asks. He turns so that he is facing Tom.

“Do you really have to ask?” Tom says with a smile.

**Author's Note:**

> What's up add me on Horse Haven World Adventures @horsegirlned


End file.
